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Diabetes mellitus is a disease where individuals have difficulty regulating their blood glucose levels, in which extremely low or high glucose concentrations can occur. Normal physiological blood glucose ranges are generally between 80-120 mg/dL (milligrams per deciliter); however, diabetics commonly have blood concentrations from 50-500 mg/dL if not properly treated. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that approximately 23.6 million individuals have some form of diabetes mellitus in the United States. If diabetes is not properly treated, other complications such as heart disease, diabetic neuropathy, and kidney disease may also arise.
The disease is commonly divided into two types. Type I diabetes is characterized by an auto-immune response resulting in the destruction of the pancreatic beta cells responsible for the production of insulin (i.e., the hormone responsible for cellular glucose uptake). Therefore, Type I diabetics are completely dependent on therapeutic insulin to compensate for this loss. Type II diabetes is related to decreased insulin sensitivity. This causes an individual to secrete larger amounts of insulin to compensate; however, often the body can not produce the required amounts.
The key to treating diabetes through therapy is to frequently monitor blood glucose concentrations, such that corrective actions can be taken. This is normally accomplished though invasive approaches, in which the testing procedure requires the skin barrier to be broken in order to obtain a blood sample for analysis. These invasive methods, however, involve pain and increased risk of infection that commonly result in low compliance. Although, only invasive methods are currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for monitoring physiological glucose, many others are attempting to develop a noninvasive blood glucose sensor. While there are many approaches proposed for noninvasive glucose sensing, however, none to date have obtained FDA approval for this application.